Bedouins seizing state land in Jordan Valley

Residents of Maskiot in Jordan Valley warn: Bedouins carrying out massive takeover of State land. Regavim: 'State must act immediately.'

Mordechai Sones, 02/01/19 14:23

Land-seizure at Maskiyot

Regavim

Residents of an illegal Bedouin outpost adjacent to Maskiyot were served with demolition orders but instead of pulling up stakes, they are performing a takeover through agricultural projects on state land – land that is registered to the State, straddling the area's major traffic artery, in an area under military closure orders.

The illegal Bedouin outpost has grown significantly in recent years thanks to the support it receives from the Palestinian Authority and a consortium of European organizations. They have begun to cultivate a huge tract of land using heavy equipment in an attempt to establish facts on the ground that will be very difficult to reverse.

"It should be clear that seemingly-innocent agricultural activity has significant legal ramifications," says Regavim Field Coordinator for Judea and Samaria Yishai Hemo. "According to the system of law in force in Judea and Samaria, agricultural use enables squatters to establish certain legal rights to the land.

Land-seizure at Maskiyot

Regavim

"In this case, as in others, despite the fact that the land in question is state-owned and registered as such in the Land Registry, if the Civil Administration fails to enforce the law at the earliest stage the result will most likely be a long, drawn-out, exhausting legal battle that the government often simply doesn't bother fighting."

The agricultural takeover at Maskiyot is only one of many such cases. The Roots of Evil report released by Regavim in December contains a detailed survey of the full extent of the methodical program of agricultural land-seizure being carried out by the Palestinian Authority and its foreign supporters. This program, the PA's "Roots Project", aims to disrupt the territorial contiguity of Israeli control in Area C, and to enable the PA to claim ownership of the land under the current system of law. Each individual tract of state land that is overtaken by PA-sponsored agricultural work is part of the larger Arab vision of mass-scale seizure of Israeli-controlled territory. Every olive tree that is planted, every terrace that is built, strengthens the Arab hold on the territory and establishes facts that may become immutable down the line.